Pyrrho

Pyrrho the Philosopher, who found himself once in a great tempest at sea, reassured those he saw most frightened around him by showing them a pig, on board with them, who was completely unbothered by the storm.

What is the point of knowledge if it robs us of sleep and peace, which we would have without it, and if it makes us feel worse than Pyrrho’s pig?

Pyrrho’s pig is ours now:

— The philosopher Pyrrho, being at sea in very great danger, by reason of a mighty storm, presented nothing to the imitation of those who were with him, in that extremity, but a hog they had on board, that was fearless and unconcerned at the tempest.

Pyrrho, and other skeptics or epechists, whose dogmas are held by many of the ancients to be taken from Homer, the seven sages, and from Archilochus and Euripides, and to whose number these are added, Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophanes, say that they are yet upon the inquiry after truth.

For which reason I cannot consent to what is said of Pyrrho, by those who represent him heavy and immovable, leading a kind of savage and unsociable life, standing the jostle of carts, going upon the edge of precipices, and refusing to accommodate himself to the laws.

Pyrrho knows nothing about it.

Neither has virtue, so simple as that which Aristo, Pyrrho, and also the Stoics, made the end of life;

Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a knowledge upon ignorance, endeavored, as all the rest who were really philosophers did, to make his life correspond with his doctrine.